17 minute read
My pulpit message notes: Keep His Commands
from TT 164
by TIMES TODAY
Keep His commands
Advertisement
We need to be in a place where what we know and what we believe in God is actually seen in our actions. We need to be in a place that what we believe about out God, is not just head knowledge. It moves from the head and goes to our heart, then it influences every single thing that we do so that it is not just an abstract out there, but is a concrete message that transforms our lives.
God’s Command
The essence of God’s command is love. To love God and to love one another.
- When Jesus Christ was asked by the Pharisees, “What is the greatest commandment in the law?” they asked Him and Jesus answered, “The greatest commandment it to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”, others versions will have the rendering “and with all your strength”. And then He said, “And second is like it, “To love your neighbour like you love yourself.”
- There are times that, this needsto be stressed even more. There are certain times that comes and that is like a litmus test and that is perhaps what we are experiencing today.
- Living in a fallen world like we do, we not only confronted by, but are often in the company of sometimes people who say one thing and that becomes an abstract and not the concrete. People who sometimes say they love God and yet the actions are different.
- I pray that the testimony of our nation, whereby the grace of God we talk about 80 to 85 percent being Christians be seen especially in times when we are coming from a hotly contested elections like today.
- This is nothing new. It was certainly the case in the early church and particularly the churches to whom John was writing this letter. It is for his reason that John when to great lengths to speak to this issue of honouring and obeying God’s command of how we can know and live they way God wants us to live.
- Remember John was writing to help the early Christian church to confront the gnostics. Gnosticism was primarily the belief that Jesus Christ could not have come as a human being because on one hand, flesh is totally evil. So the thrust of their message was that you need to have some kind of special knowledge.
- So John is writing and saying, forget all those things. Everything that we need to do is to honour and to obey the commands of God.
- Much to the contrary, John says, true Christianity is not much of what we know as it is to who we know. It is not just head knowledge, but is knowledge that has moved from our heads to our hearts and therefore that knowledge influences every single thing that we do.
- True Christianity is not evidenced by a knowledgeable head, but rather by a changed heart.
- Chapter 2 John makes the point that to know that we know God is to obey God and His commands. We know that we know Him because we have His love.
- John tells us that if we love Him we will grow to be more like Him and that our love for Him must be undivided.
4 points
The place of love 1 John 2:1-11
The process of Christian growth / maturity 1 John 2:12-14
The pitfall of this world 1 John 2:15-17
The practice of a believer 1 John 2:18-29
The place of love. 1 John 2:1-11
This primarily means the priority of love in the life of a Christian.
- Love is one of those themes throughout most of the writing of John. Whether it is in the gospel of in the epistles, love is a recurring theme. John draws our attention to three things:
a. The origin of that love verse one to seven b.
The operation of that love. Verse seven to eight. c. The opposite of that love.
The New Testament (N.T) which was primarily written in Greek has three words for love. One is the love of an attraction of the opposite gender. Another is the love for family members, but there is one beyond that and it is the Agape love and that is what John is talking about here.
- Agape love is a love of choice. Not out of attraction, or obligation, but is a choice that someone makes and it primarily comes because we have known Jesus Christ as our personal Saviour. That is the love of God, because Agape love is not just choice, but is also sacrificial because Jesus Christ came to die for you and I and that is the Agape love we are talking about.
- The priority is that this love should take the centre stage of a Christian’s life. Agape love is what Jesus Christ displayed on the cross for us as He took our place for the sin.
- The origin of love - verse one
- That origin we see in verse one and seven, “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.”
- It is said that when John was writing this he was fairly senior in age.
- We know that we have come to know Him if we keep His commands, and by Jesus Christ coming that was the place where it began.
- The origin of Agape love starts with God and God expressing it not just in the creation of the world and man in His own image, but even when man walked away from Him, He continues to pursue us by sending His one and only Son to come and die on the cross for us.
- The origin of this love is God himself.
- That is why in the beginning in the O.T. God’s desire was that we would love Him and love others. The quotation of Jesus Christ, for the Jews this was the most basic confession of faith. Known as the shema, they were very devoted in repeating that text Deuteronomy 6:4-5 at least twice a day, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind and strength.
The operation of love - verse seven
- When you / I was walk / talk that love is seen. When you and I write a message, the love is seen especially in the times when it is difficult. In our WhatsApp messages, that love is seen. That is the command we have.
The opposite of love - verse nine to eleven
- Anyone who claims to be in the light, who is not operating in that love, who says that I know Jesus, but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. In other words, that love is not operational in their lives.
The process of Christian growth / maturity 1 John 2:12-14
- Here John addresses three different groups of people in the church. First he says, ‘the children’ , those who are primarily young in faith. Secondly, he addresses ‘the fathers’, those who have been believers for a little longer. Then he address, ‘the young men’, those who presently carry, sometime the responsibility for the furtherance of the gospel.
- Notice that with each of these stages of spiritual growth, or maturity, each group of people there is a specific concern that John wants to address to each of them.
- For example to the children, those who are perhaps young in faith, have just known Jesus Christ as their Saviour. Those who are early in their walk as believers, he simply states they know their sins are forgiven and that they know they Father. Because when we come to faith, the few early days are those early days, what sticks in our mind is where God has brought us from. The sins that He has saved us from.
- When he comes to the fathers, John points out that they have known from the beginning, he wants to remind the rest of the church that there are those who have been faithfully walking with Jesus Christ. So he says continue in that journey. Know that you have faithfully walked with God all these years to see the living testimony of your witness gives the many younger members confidence so that all God says is true. You are living testimonies to God’s faithfulness.
- Then John writes to the young men, those who perhaps are still very active in the church. To the leaders in the church, who perhaps we may refer to as the core of the leadership. These are the people who do much of what gets done.
He says, ‘I am writing to you because you have overcome the evil and because you are strong and the word of God abides in you. Continue walking in that way. So that we are continuing to grow.
- In every healthy church there should be all these three groups, but the bottomline is this, we should not be in a place we are stagnating. We should be growing in the things of God.
- Remember John is writing to confront the teachings of gnosticism. If we stop growing then we are likely to be taken up by all the philosophies that come and sometimes do not bring glory and honour to God.
- I pray that we will be found in a place of growth like the Sunday service, like Home Group Fellowships, that what we are learning we are passing on to others in service.
- Peter writing in his second letter says, “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”
- When we stop growing, then when we are in situations like we are in, without knowing you find that you have sent a message that is likely to offend the other and does not reflect that we are the children of the living God.
The pitfall of the world. 1 John 2:15-17
- Whereas we are told to love God and one another, here we are strongly warned against loving the world and the things of the world. When John warns us not to love the world nor the things of the world, he is speaking about the materialistic world in which we live in.
- John wants us to be so alert that we are in the world, but not of the world. The world will always have a way in which they want philosophies and other things to go. We need to be alert so that we are not responding in the ways of the world. So John says do not love or anything in the world for the Father is not in them. If anyone loves the world, love of the Father is not in them.
- The true test of our growth / faith is that which we love.
- We are in this world as the light so that we are the ones who should be setting the standard. We are in this world as the salt of the earth, to cure, to preserve and yet we need to know that as we are in this world, we are not of the world. - John says
- John immediately categorises some of the things that when you see them you will not even need to think twice, you will see that this is something of the world. For example, the lust of the flesh i.e. the immorality of man, the cravings of flesh. That is why you find in the world today, immorality has been glorified. That is the pattern of this world.
- John says, beware of the pitfalls of this world. The other is the lust of the eyes - materialism. We continually gather and that is what leads to greed and to a large extent that is also what gives birth to corruption.
- The next is the boastful pride of life. When we want to show that we are somebody. This is what I have achieved. John says those are the standards of this world. It is okay to have the achievements, but if that is what is defining us, that when I walk into a place it must be noticed, John says watch out. John says, the world and its desires will pass away. But the one who lives according to the truth of the word of God, that person will Iive forever.
- There always have been and will be those even within the church whose loyalties are divided, whose hearts are not completely sold out to God. That is why when Paul writing to young Timothy says, ‘For Demus has deserted me because he loves this present love.’
- When put to test, are we obeying this Word of God? Are we doing what defines us?
The practice of a believer. 1 John 2:18-29
- This talks about a life of consistency saying live what you believe. Live the truth.
- John brings this out in the context of a warning. “Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come.”
- John is saying the days are evil and there is an aspect that the antichrist will come, but he is talking f many other antichrists and that looks like anyone that is opposed to the things of God. So beware, they are all around us. It is written all over. There are some small theories, teachings, philosophies that are directly opposed to the ways of God. This happened in the context of a warning,
- Verse 19,
- John says in such a scenario, perhaps they were not fully belonging to Jesus Christ.
- That is why I am saying, the practice of a child of God / believer is to remain consistent, to remain in the Word of God no matter what happens, no matter the challenges we face in the world so that our practice will be very consistent, living the truth, living the Word of God in our lives.
- My prayer is that it will not just be something that we confess with our mouths, but also something seen in our lives. The longer we come to church, the longer we have friends who are Christians, we have the Christian jargon, ‘praise the Lord brother/sister’.
- John is saying that as the children of God we remain in that truth. It is okay to say, ‘Bwana asifiwe / praise the Lord’ but say it when you mean it.
- Verse 24
- The life of a believer is of consistency.
- Verse 28 “And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming. 29 If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him.”
- The one who walks in the light, the one who is growing in their spiritual maturity, the one who walks in the light and has fellowship with God and with God’s people is not preoccupied by the love of the world. Rather they are preoccupied by the love of God. Rather they are preoccupied with the temporal things of this world. They have positioned themselves to seek first the kingdom of God and the righteousness of God and by the grace of God all these things shall be added unto us. After all as Jesus asks in Matthew 6:26, “What will it benefit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his life, or what will a man give in exchange for his life?” Where is your/my love?
- Remember it is first the love of God and then the love of those that are around me.
- Those that are around me, since we are in a political season, may not have voted they way I voted, but the love of God.
- Those that are around me, we may disagree in one or two ways, but the love of God, so that even when there is a disagreement it is done in a God honouring and God fearing way.
- How I pray that the church of Jesus Christ across this land, that the body of Jesus Christ in Kenya today will express that love in a time that is politically charged. It is true that I may not change the entire Kenya, as an individual, but if I change the person that is next to me, and they change the person next to them, then it continues and before we know it the entire country will have been affected, but that can only happen when we obey and honour the command of God.
“Love the Lord our God with all our hearts, with all our souls and with all our minds and with all our strength and to love our neighbours as we love ourselves.
